ROANOKE, Va. (AP) — Michelle Powell of Moneta is again living aspects of the life she had before a doctor injected contaminated medicine into her spine and she fell horribly ill last fall.
The fungal meningitis is, thankfully, gone, she said.
Now she can again attack the back pain that she saw a doctor for in the first place — the pain for which she got the shot that she contends turned out to contain a dangerous fungus.
Only now is the treatment of her ruptured disc getting back on track.
"My life really has been delayed, in addition to put in pain," said Powell, 41, a homemaker and mother of three.
The U.S. health care industry shuddered last fall under complaints from hundreds of people sickened by steroids that are routinely injected to alleviate pain. Some 745 people in 20 states were confirmed to have fungal meningitis, and 58 died, five of them Virginians, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those numbers continue to be revised, with the next update due July 1.
Suspicion has fallen on one company, New England Compounding Center, and authorities have since linked steroids from New England's Framingham, Mass., facility to the outbreak. The company has shut down and filed bankruptcy in December.
Southwest Virginia was heavily affected by the outbreak and is home to most or all of the 54 confirmed fungal meningitis cases in the state. Two busy local practices that administer spinal injections used New England's product: Insight Imaging in Roanoke and New River Valley Surgery Center in Montgomery County.
Chris Sherrill, 36, a Roanoke windshield repair worker and father of two, said his infection came on fast and hit hard.
"I had severe neck pain, severe headaches, my arms and extremities were going numb and I had no idea what was going on," he said.
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